The federal government has sped up the printing of new currency notes besides taking unprecedented loans from local banks to meet its expenditure. 

The federal government led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has set a new record of printing new currency notes in the first month of the New Year, January 2021. 

In the first two weeks of the ongoing month, the federal government printed Rs12.79 billion new currency notes per day on an average to meet its expenditure. The government has printed new currency notes of more than Rs177.69 billion this year so far. Now the total value of currency notes in circulation is Rs6,721 billion. 

Also, the government took a loan of more than Rs8 billion per day on an average from local banks to meet its financial needs. 

On the contrary, State Bank of Pakistan Governor Reza Baqir painted an optimistic picture of the Pakistani economy this week. Addressing a press conference after the Monetary Policy Committee's meeting, he said, "The economy is improving and Pakistan's monetary policy supports it. The improvement is still not the kind that we would like to see for our nation." He said the production capacity was not being fully used and inflation was expected to rise due to an increase in power tariff.

"Our situation is better today. It's not what it was at the time of the IMF programme or in June 2019," Baqir said. The SBP chief said the Pakistani rupee strengthened when the US dollar was linked to the market rate. The exchange rate system was adapted to the market to improve the current account, he said, noting that the change was made in May-June 2019.